Judge accused of helping friends with traffic tickets

The state's Commission on Judicial Performances has instituted formal proceedings against one of Orange County's longest-serving judges, accusing him of giving preferential treatment to relatives, acquaintances and his pastor in traffic citation cases.

The commission filed nine specific allegations accusing Superior Court Judge Richard W. Stanford Jr. of calling cases for people he knew on his own and rendering sentences on traffic infractions over a seven-year span.

The action alleges that Stanford entered guilty pleas on behalf of the defendants in several citation cases but waived fines and fees. In some cases, Stanford sent eligible people to traffic school.

The action triggers a July 25 hearing in Orange County, which could lead to disciplinary action against the judge ranging from an admonishment to a public censure or removal from office. Stanford will remain on the bench pending the outcome.

The people he helped included a son-in-law, a court clerk, his pastor, neighbors, a friend who remodeled his house, an elderly woman who was a longtime family friend, and a juror in one of his cases, according to a "notice of formal proceedings" filed by the commission April 7 and made public Tuesday.

The notice contends that the citations would not have come before Stanford in the ordinary course of judicial business, but he transferred those cases to his courtroom, which normally is assigned felony criminal matters.

Stanford, appointed to the Orange County Municipal Court bench in 1985 and elevated to Superior Court in 1998, does not deny the allegations and has apologized, according to Paul S. Meyer, his attorney.

"Judge Richard Stanford first and foremost apologizes for his actions," Meyer said Tuesday. "Although no tickets were dismissed and only discretionary fines and fees were waived, Judge Stanford now clearly realizes that in those nine traffic infractions in the last 10 years, he gave preferential treatment, which violates the standards of conduct."

Meyer said Stanford's excellent service for 26 years as a judge and 12 years before that as a deputy district attorney "are in contrast to his thoughtless actions for these nine traffic infractions."

He added that Stanford "is anguished by these acts, which he had wrongfully rationalized were saving time for the court and resulted in the same DMV records as if the people had come to court."

Stanford, the fourth-longest continually serving judge on the Orange County bench, has also donated the amount of fines he could have assessed in the traffic cases to the Orangewood Children's Home, Meyer said.

The judge will cooperate with the commission's investigation and proceeding, Meyer added. He said he has advised Stanford to decline public comment.

Stanford, 63, has presided over mostly criminal cases from N-10, his courtroom in the North Justice Center in Fullerton for the past eight years. He is known as a tough-sentencing, no-nonsense jurist. He presided over several newsworthy cases, including:

But he also has made some controversial decisions that were reversed on appeal.

Most recently, the 4th District Court of Appeal overturned a conviction and Stanford's sentence of life plus eight years given in December 2009 to an Anaheim man for the unprovoked stabbings of two strangers during a screening of a horror movie at a Fullerton theater in 2008.

The appellate court ruled that Stanford erred when he precluded Deputy Public Defender Erica Gambale from arguing that her client may not have been able to form the intent to kill or premeditate and deliberate because of mental illness.

In February 2005, the same appellate court reversed the conviction and life sentence given to a gasoline-station attendant convicted of killing a co-worker in 1991, ruling that Stanford erred when he sent jurors back to continue deliberating after they reported they were deadlocked.

Stanford grew up in Orange County and graduated from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in speech, according to the Los Angeles Daily Journal, a legal publication. He served in the Army National Guard before he was accepted into the law school at the University of Southern California.

He was a deputy district attorney in Orange County for 12 years before he was appointed to the Municipal Court bench in Santa Ana in 1985 by then-Gov. George Deukmejian. He made one unsuccessful campaign to be elected an Orange County Superior Court judge in 1996, but was elevated anyway in 1998 when the Superior and Municipal court benches merged.

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